March 8 is International Women’s Day, with celebrations all over the world commemorating women’s contributions to family, country and world. Improving the lot of women has been a goal of the international community for the last 50 years. Enormous progress has been made. Much remains to be done.

In mid-February UN Women, the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the New York-based Equality Now sponsored a conference at the United Nations on Sustainable Development Goal 5.1, which calls for an end to discrimination in laws and policies at every level. Enforcement of women’s legal rights is an indispensable factor in their empowerment.

In 2016 the World Bank found 100 economies where women faced gender-based job restrictions. Forty-six countries had no laws specifically protecting women from domestic violence. In many places husbands can legally prevent their wives from working.

There are also wide disparities in women’s ability to open a bank account, to take out a business loan, to having their testimony equal to that of a man’s in court proceedings, to being able to inherit property and pass it on to their children.

One can add to this the fact that two-thirds of the world’s illiterates are women. Imagine your world if you couldn’t read. Imagine also that because of poverty your family forces you to marry at 14. In all likelihood your choices in life will be few and far between.

Yet all over the world women are overcoming barriers, becoming entrepreneurs, earning income, running for office at all levels, reducing societal conflicts and caring for their families and villages. Their lives are many-faceted and worthy of celebration.

My particular interest is in women’s access to reproductive health and family planning. When George W. Bush refused to release $34 million to the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) in 2002, I started asking 34 million Americans for one dollar. Please see www.34millionfriends.org. UNFPA is the largest reproductive health care agency in the world, working in over 150 countries. Making sure women survive childbirth and offering them contraceptive choices is their primary task. For instance in the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan where thousands upon thousands of Syrians have gathered, there have been more than 7,000 births and no fatalities thanks to UNFPA.

And quite honestly, you who are reading this have probably used or will use family planning/contraception in your life. It’s a great gift of science to humanity. The ability to choose whether and when to have children is absolutely necessary for women to be able fulfill all the myriad roles available to them. And it’s a great saver of women’s and children’s lives.

Unfortunately, funding for UNFPA has become political in this country. President Trump, with his enhanced Global Gag Rule, will no doubt defund. What a tragedy!

But enough of politics! Wednesday and every day let us celebrate the role of the female half of the human race for being, in their myriad ways, the glue that holds our world together.

Jane Roberts is the author of “34 Million Friends of the Women of the World” (Ladybug Press, 2005). She lives in Redlands.

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